I always feel good when I come in here and stand in front of the Buddha, especially with you, standing there, standing here with you together. I don't know why, but, you know, I have this feeling, and also that this room is becoming more of a zendo. And for us, since we don't have two rooms, we have a sender and Buddha hall. No, I... I've been trying an experiment this week together. First let me say, I guess if the weather holds, today would be a good day to take our break.

[01:08]

And... Today I will give you, sometime today, the copy of the precepts so you can see how really all this talk about something quite simple. You go faster than me. And I think those of you who think we have one person whose raksha was done, is that right? So for one person I will make lineage papers and things. And for anyone else who wants to take the precepts, maybe you could tell Kisla as our Ina, so we can begin to think about how to do the ceremony.

[02:24]

Okay, you can decide the last minute to anyone. I may decide to take them the last minute, too. And if we are ending Saturday at noon, I believe, then it means we should probably do the ceremony Friday afternoon. Does that sound right to you, Kisum? Okay, okay. Well, as I started to say, this week has been an experiment, partly just to share with you my feelings about practice and understanding just these days.

[03:42]

But also to give you a more, excuse the word, adept understanding of taking the precepts. If I keep speaking about the lay adept practice, you know, that's what I should teach you then. Now, lay adept practice can also just mean... Simple, sincere practice. But I said simple, sincere practice, not simple, sincere understanding.

[04:44]

If you have a simple, sincere practice, and it's true practice, this is good enough. Nothing else is needed. But if you have a simple, sincere understanding, this may be a problem. As someone said to me recently, a while ago, transmission is nothing but heart-to-heart understanding. Well, it might be the case, but it might not be the case. What people mean by heart to heart, you know, I don't know. It's somewhere between Valentine's Day and... So if we're going to have an understanding, our understanding should be thorough and as deep as possible.

[05:49]

Because a simple understanding will get in the way of a simple practice. Now, the Abhidharmists believe in Buddhism that if you can really develop your language, you can come to a language that accurately or fairly accurately expresses how we exist. But the Mahayana view, and particularly Yogacara view, is even this is necessary, but this is in the end also isn't enough. That we have to find some way to use ordinary language with the intimation in the ordinary language of this wider world we live in.

[07:11]

And koans are the best example of this. Well, they can look pretty much like an ordinary conversation. But they sometimes, as it's said in one koan, they put the hook when you're not looking in an unsuspecting place. And then they give a yank. Okay, so... This is just an aside.

[08:34]

When I was a kid, you know, my mother was a pretty good cook. But I still had the feeling that my... Like when we ate out of the garden or when my mother cooked very simply, the food tasted the way, it seemed to me, my taste buds wanted food to taste. My mother cooked quite simply, but I had the feeling that my sense cells on the tongue wanted to taste the food. This is just to say that, and my body, as a child, felt like there was something missing. And it wasn't until I started Zazen that my body discovered what was missing.

[09:36]

It was as if my body was waiting for this way of knowing itself. And I think our ordinary nature is waiting for Buddha nature. Now, this whole sense of Sambhogakaya body and big mind and so forth is not going to make much practical sense to you. Until you learn, until you get in the habit of resting in this big mind.

[10:45]

And that's the idea of Shikantaza and the idea of Sazen practice. You may not know exactly what you're doing at this level of understanding, but if you get used to zazen, which is neither sleeping nor waking, and you find your rest in it, and you get in the habit of finding your rest in it, then it can become real enough for you to begin to trust in it. And you can also, you know, through practicing mindfulness as well as Zazen, you can come to rest in this big mind.

[12:02]

Now, if we understand through, you know, because we have all been babies and we are all potential parents or parents, We know that, as we discussed yesterday and came out in the discussion, that trust is so important for a baby and for the development of the baby's character and potentiality as an adult. So if we can understand that it's not just this physical object which is born from two people, but a quality like trust, which really is the basis of the person.

[13:06]

And this kind of actual interactive trust and sensory awakeness can actually be measured, and measured in an adult when it wasn't present as a... Its absence can be measured in an adult when it wasn't present as a child. So this sense of trust and interactive trust with the world and with other people is, you know, real. As real as things get. Now, so don't you imagine that if you developed a real deep trust in yourself that this wouldn't also then become the basis of your development or even of a new kind of person?

[14:47]

Sukhi Roshi used to say we can't really do zazen until you can really trust yourself. Now, we can accept ourselves. This is essential. And we can accept ourselves just as we are. And this direction, this effort to accept ourselves is fundamental to practice. But it's pretty hard to trust ourselves completely, our usual self.

[15:49]

So then, if you're practicing zazen, you have to ask, what can I trust? And when you're practicing zazen, you have to ask, what can I trust? So I'm here at the same point I was trying to express yesterday. When you can start to trust your wider existence, this experience we can have in zazen of no comparative mind and so forth, This is not just an experience. An experience of zazen or samadhi or mindfulness. This is the basis for our true nature. So this is the basic teaching of Buddhism, that we can take a deep responsibility for our own life.

[17:04]

We can see that Buddha nature, Buddhism and Buddha are mixed in with ordinary human nature. And luckily, it's the overall atmosphere. It's the main ingredient of our life. And of our society's life. But it's not always the explicit expression of our life or our society's life. So Buddhism is to feel this and to make it explicit. And to make it explicit is to take a bow. Now, when two people are in love or two people make love and make a baby, this is a kind of vow.

[18:26]

We even consecrate the relationship with the vow. But ideally it should be and should be influences even when it's not. An act of trust. It's a physical intention even if not a conscious intention. So we can say a baby comes from a deep intention. Not always conscious, but in our human world, a deep intention. So what I'm trying to emphasize is the way, how important Buddhism feels intention is.

[19:44]

The instinct to reproduce is, from a Buddhist point of view, not instinct but intention. And there's an instinct or intention to realize ourselves, to become Buddha. But we have to discover how to bring this intention more explicitly into our life. And in ancient times, they discovered that the best way, they thought anyway, was meditation. The way we can most get in touch with what Sukhiyoshi always called our innermost request. that this is the way how we can best get in touch with what Suzuki Roshi called our deepest inner desire.

[21:01]

So this is not exactly in the realm of language, so I'm trying to find some way to speak at it, although I can't quite speak about it. So if you get in the habit of... If you become familiar with this... big mind, this mind from which everything arises. And you're familiar enough through resting in this mind from which everything arises that you can begin to trust it. And when you begin to trust it, it isn't just now any longer an experience.

[23:06]

It happens at some times in your life. But that it becomes a Buddha body. Maybe an embryo Buddha. Or a Sambhogakaya body, we say. So these are words that Buddhism has developed to try to speak about this. As we might say that... Christina and Eric and all of us together, I think, have this feeling too, trying to... meet Julius with a body of trust. And intuitively trying to help Julius develop his body of trust. So in the Sangha, we're trying to help each other develop this body of trust we call the Sambhogakaya body.

[24:33]

And it's developed from an intention and a vow. Now, when we understand the precepts in this way, the precepts aren't about trying to control ourselves. Like, you know, not eat so much or not gossip so much or something. Of course, you know, it's quite helpful to follow the precepts and not gossip so much. But if you're practicing the precepts in the way I'm talking about, you stop gossiping not because it's a bad thing to do, but because you feel bad when you do it. You can feel your energy draining out.

[25:48]

You feel less intact because practice has made you know when you feel intact and when you don't. So we follow the precepts not only because it's something isn't a good thing to do, but also because we can see how it's harming us. Yeah. Now, what it means to say we are born from a vow rather than from karma. And taking the precepts is the first step in being born from a vow.

[26:51]

Instead of trying to shape ourselves, you know, we have this karma and it leads us to do this, and then we try to have some rule about behavior, etc., We are now acting not from our karma, but acting from our big mind. So I might see you, like Jean-Francois. And I can see you as a young man. Yeah, pretty young. And who wears a purple shirt? And I can have many associations with the type of person you may be or could be, and so forth.

[28:07]

And if I think that way, I am more relating to you from my karma. But if I relate to you from big mind, when I see you, I say, what is that? It looks like a young man. It must be a young man. And like that. So instead of you coming from my karma, you appear from my mind from which everything arises. And you appear quite fresh and new. But yes, I have certain karmic habits and seeds and proclivities.

[29:10]

Proclivities, tendencies. And as soon as I start thinking about you, then these karmic habits come in. But from a long habit of resting in big mind, These karmic habits come in, but they don't have the kind of power they used to. Mostly, and my initial perception comes from, what is it? Mm-hmm. So this kind of way of being in the world is what is meant by being born from a vow rather than from karma.

[30:28]

Yeah. So we're born from a vow And we're born from big mind. And the ability to be born from above and to be born from big mind are interrelated. Because Although we are all born from big mind, as a habit of the way we exist and think, it's not the case. We have to have some enlightenment experience or intention or vow to shift the direction of our life toward big mind.

[31:32]

So taking the precepts is, you know, a good thing to do, but it's also this shift toward being born from big mind. I'm so impressed you can do all this. I can barely say it in English. Some people wouldn't call this English even. So let me give you an inventory of these words. Emptiness.

[32:42]

Emptiness means I'll keep it simple. Emptiness means the condition which allows everything to appear. And it's identified often with space. But space in a kind of Einsteinian sense in that it's interactive with with material and time. Emptiness is not considered empty. It's considered full of everything that is. And it makes everything possible. Okay. When we call it Dharmakaya, we are the Dharmakaya.

[34:12]

Kaya means body, the Dharmakaya body. So when we call it the Dharma body, we mean our relationship to it. Dharma-körper bedeutet unsere Beziehung dazu, unser Verständnis davon. So emptiness is rather neutral, and it's rather important to have an experience of this neutrality, not to make everything so personalized and humanized. Und Wahrheit ist neutral, und es ist wichtig, eine Erfahrung dieser Neutralität zu haben und nicht alles so persönlich und menschlich zu machen. But when we call emptiness the Dharma body, we are emphasizing our attempt to understand it and to act within it. So we understand things in terms of Dharma, which means teaching, but also precisely to know things in their particularity.

[35:21]

Sorry. It means teaching in a big sense, but it also means to know things in their particularity. Okay. So there's emptiness and then there's the Dharma body. But the Dharma body just means like your body is there. And it's called a body because it has the quality of, the potentiality of activity. And when we emphasize the activity, we call it Dharma nature. When you experience that Dharma nature, that Dharma activity in yourself, we call it the Sambhogakaya. And when we emphasize the isomorphic, do you know the word isomorphic?

[36:24]

No. Isomorphic means it shares the same form, but it may have arisen from different causes. So when we emphasize our own minds parallel and isomorphic relationship to emptiness, relationship to emptiness. When we emphasize that emptiness and mind are similar, then we call it original mind. So when we emphasize the mind in which all things arise, we call it original mind. So this is sometimes called the mind before, like these Zen systems.

[37:43]

Do you know the mind before your parents were born? This emphasizes the unity of original mind and emptiness. Original face, this kind of Now, okay, so we have emptiness. And we have dharma body. Then we have dharma nature. Okay, when we emphasize this as our own activity, we call it Buddha nature. So, or we can say original mind and then Buddha nature. Okay. Buddha nature is the activity of this mind. everything arising from which everything can arise in ourselves.

[39:10]

When you begin to trust this mind from which everything arises, then we call it Sambhogakaya Buddha. Because it begins to function in us like perhaps trust functions in Julius. We've discovered we can't completely trust in self, but we can trust in big self or big mind. And this becomes the conception of nirmanakaya or Buddha nature. So we can also speak of original mind and generated mind. So, original mind is to realize the emptiness or the mind before thought arises. The mind before thought arises.

[40:21]

But it's undeveloped. When it's developed and realized in you, we call it generated mind. When you know it well and you can rest in it without straying from it, it's no longer original. It's generated. It's present with you. So Buddhism, and when you hear these, like just in chanting this, it says, the Tathagata, you know, etc. This is what this is trying to tell you, but, you know. But it is understood that none of this, this is all present, but it's not natural. And it's not going to happen naturally.

[41:26]

It happens through intention. So we speak about the vow body or the precept body. And the first step is to take the precepts. To vow just to be an ordinary human being with other human beings. And recognize what our nature is as human beings. We're not dogs and we're not trees. And we have to take care of ourselves in a certain way. And the basis of taking the precepts, why we take the refuges first, is we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[42:29]

And from an adept point of view, this means to have come to the point where you can take refuge in, completely trust the mind from which all things arise. And when you can take refuge, completely trust the mind from which all things arise then you can really take the precepts in a way of manifesting yourself when things appear. It's like this. So ist das. Hmm. Thank you.

[43:53]

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